Matthew Macfadyen, who is starring in a new BBC dramatisation of EM Forster’s Howards End, and is married to fellow actor Keeley Hawes, says there are fewer roles for women (a trend Hawes has bucked) and rues the “wasteland” many encounter during their middle years.

“There are just fewer parts for women. And also there’s a weird thing with women where initially you’re the ingénue, and then there’s a wasteland, and then you’re Hedda Gabler. Guys don’t have that; they float through,” says Macfadyen, adding that the much discussed gender pay gap certainly extends to actors on TV.

“Men are by and large paid more than women. I know this from Keeley, that the sort of excuse they’ll use is, ‘Well, he’s done a few American things.’ And you think, well, no. It’s not to do with that. It’s cobblers.”

As an American adapting a very British story, Lonergan detailed during a Q and A at the preview, that it came with its challenges but his love for the book and the period in which it is set made it a joy to make.“It was somewhat of a challenge to adapt a story with characters that had such a rich internal life, but the story is equally focused on the external world that they are living in and the changes in society investigated in the story. To make those things come forward in a dramatisation was a really interesting challenge. There is a tremendous internal narrative for Margaret’s character in the novel that is quite a challenge to put on the screen. I love the period and just love the book. Most of the dialogue is right out of the book and the rest also from the book and movies I have seen, Monty Python… [laughs]”...Hayley Atwell, who plays the leading lady Margaret Schlegel, reiterated that is exactly what happened on set.

“We felt like we were rehearsing it as a play in the mornings, so Hettie would come in, the book was on hand, the script was there. We were allowed as actors and the director to just to have that space we were to be shooting in. Once we know how to technically and visually knew how to set it and where to put the cameras was a gift. Sometimes when you’re working on television the time is limited. So there is always that pressure that you are aware off that you come in and just do it. We were really given the time to figure out what Kenny was saying, that Forster had been saying and how we were best going to bring that out. We hardly ever overran because of that”.

The first episode was nothing but delightful, anyone with a love of a good period dramatisation will simply fall in love with every facet of this adaptation, and like the rest of the general public, we will be counting down the days until the series airs.

Actually, the tweed-wearing hasn’t gone too far away. In fact it will be on display on a television screen near you this very evening. Because before we get to see Succession, Macfadyen is popping up in a new TV adaptation of Howards End.

EM Forster’s Edwardian novel about class, social convention and hypocrisy has been turned into a four-part BBC drama by Kenneth Lonergan, the Oscar-winning scriptwriter of Manchester By The Sea.

You may have seen the Merchant Ivory version of Howards End, starring Anthony Hopkins as industrialist Henry Wilcox and Emma Thompson as Margaret Schlegel, the liberal intellectual who falls in love with him, and Helena Bonham Carter as Margaret's sister Helen. Macfadyen is taking the Wilcox role. Hayley Atwell is playing Margaret.

Macfadyen recalls the Hopkins-Thompson version fondly. “I had seen the film when I was just about to go to drama school and I remember really loving it. It was around that time when there was a wonderful patch of movies with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Remains Of The Day was just after that, I think.”

But that didn’t put him off signing up for the new version. “The script was such a beautiful thing to read. It was unsentimentally adapted if that makes sense. So it was a no-brainer.”

There were no qualms about stepping into Mr Hopkins’s shoes? “No, apart from with any part you think: ‘I mustn’t f*** this up.’ But, actually, more than anything you think it’s thrilling to be stepping in the footsteps of somebody like him.

“And they’re just brilliant parts. There’s that lovely quote – I think Alan Rickman said it, but that might be rubbish – ‘There are no great actors. There are just great parts.’ And there is a big dose of truth in that, you know.

“People always imagine actors are terrified of following another actor but actually you’re measuring yourself against the role and it’s thrilling that you’re in such good company.”

Presumably, though, this is a very different take on the story. Well, probably, he says. “I haven’t actually seen it. It’s four hours as opposed to an hour and a half so inevitably we can explore it in greater detail and with more breadth and it’s probably a little less chocolate-boxy … But I shouldn’t say it because I haven’t seen it and I really love the Merchant Ivory film so I wasn’t going in thinking: ‘I want to get away from that.’

“The honest answer is I can’t wait to see it. I will look through my fingers at my pubic beard in horror,” he laughs.

What Macfadyen can say is that he thinks his character Henry Wilcox – a strait-laced London businessman – is fascinating. “He’s a man of his time. He’s a Victorian capitalist empire-builder type. He’s very certain about his place in the world and Britain’s place in the world and men and women and the way society should work.

“But during the course of his relationship with Margaret he sort of falls in love with her. He’s nuanced. He’s not just a type. He does bad things, but he’s also capable of great generosity and humility I suppose.”

It’s a story about class, right? “Yeah, it’s class, it’s men and women, it’s about town and country. It’s got an awful lot in there. It’s about sex, money, capitalism, but it’s done in such an elegant way that it never feels like you’re being beaten over the head by it. Forster lobs these little bombs in the backdrop of the story.”

It’s a story that is still relevant. One of Macfadyen's Howards End co-stars, Tracy Ullman, speaking in the US, recently said: “I’m a working-class girl, and the class system perpetuates in my country and in this country, too – and that’s what fascinates me. And it’s still tough for girls – curious, liberal girls like Margaret.”

The question, then, is have we moved on from Forster’s world at all? “I don’t know if we have," says Macfadyen. "Women can vote and work and there is more parity. Society has changed a lot but you still have the very, very wealthy … I don’t know. I don’t know how much human behaviour changes over the years.

“Conventions change. But especially in the light of all the recent revelations about men and women and men in power and all that gubbins and who we have in the White House …” He runs out of words for a moment before continuing at an angle. “It’s lovely telling stories for a living because everything’s refracted through that.”

You worked with Matthew Mcfadyen on the BBC series Any Human Heart in 2010. Was it nice to be reunited?

Everyone knows that Matthew is an utter delight to work with and it made it more fun that we had worked together before. There were no teambuilding exercises. We had this in joke that Margaret infantilises Henry and that by the end of the story, he’s basically just wearing a giant nappy and eating. On the last day of filming I put a nappy in his costume trousers, a dummy in his pocket, and a training potty on his toilet. Every time a runner got him a cup of tea it was put in a sippy cup.

How did he take it?

Well, he turned up to rehearsals wearing the nappy outside of his trousers. I was having my make-up done and I turned around to see him through a window just staring at me with a dummy in his mouth. Doing pranks on set makes everyone do the best kind of work because they’re all relaxed. We spent most of our time doing that really.